


The Plague Doctor

by awkwardauthoracts



Category: Hannibal (TV), Hannibal Lecter Series - All Media Types, IT (Movies - Muschietti), IT - Stephen King
Genre: Angst, Blood and Gore, Body Horror, Cannibalism, Crossover, F/M, Horror, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, M/M, Murder, Psychological Horror, Unconventional Families, Unhealthy Relationships, this is pretty on-brand for these two fandoms
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-07-09
Updated: 2020-07-09
Packaged: 2021-03-04 21:54:37
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,384
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25173469
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/awkwardauthoracts/pseuds/awkwardauthoracts
Summary: Richie spent the first seventeen years of his life watching news anchors talk about the disappearances of children in Maine. He grew up and found out that the woman behind the disappearances, the murders, had a son who she fed the victims to. Flash forward twenty years and Richie found himself face to face with the son.Dr. Kaspbrak wasn’t as interesting as Richie hoped he would be.Time and bloodshed would change that opinion.
Relationships: Ben Hanscom/Beverly Marsh, Eddie Kaspbrak/Richie Tozier
Comments: 1
Kudos: 9





	The Plague Doctor

**Author's Note:**

> Heads up: this isn't just a rewrite of Hannibal canon with different names. That would be boring. This has more flavor than that.

When Eddie was young, he truly believed his house was haunted. His mother never believed him, of course. Not when he said there was something in his closet, not when he told her about the shuffling around in the walls at night, and not when he said he could see eyes staring at him through the vent above his bed. 

Eddie never had any siblings. His dad died when he was five, and his mom never remarried. He never got any pets because he was allergic to all of them. He never had any friends because his mom scared them all away. Well, there was a young boy with a southern accent Eddie had been friends with for about a week before he disappeared. His mom told him Will had just moved away, but Eddie had seen the missing posters; they were hard to avoid. Eddie wasn’t sure if they ever found Will. He didn’t think so. Starting a few days after Will’s disappearance, the food Eddie’s mom served at dinner became a lot better. Eddie didn’t question it because he was a mere six years old, but there was always meat in his food. Meat stews, braised meat, boiled meat, broiled meat, grilled meat, meat stir fry, meat _purée_. Everything was meat-based from that day forward. And Eddie’s mom seemed a lot more relaxed after that. 

Now that Eddie was almost forty, it should have seemed a lot more obvious. 

When Eddie was seven, his mother began locking him in the bathroom for extended periods of time. He never knew why she did it or when it was going to happen until the moment of, but about once a week, he was locked in the bathroom. He never knew for how long because there were no clocks and his mom made sure Eddie never had on his watch before going in. He wasn’t allowed anything, so usually, he bathed. Cleaned up everything. Showered the cleaning chemicals off his body. Brushed his teeth. Washed his hands. Wiped the counters off again. Swept the floor. Dusted the tops of cabinets. Showered again. Usually, by then, his mother would let him out. There was always a meal waiting for him. “You must be hungry, Eddie-bear. Why don’t you eat something?”

Really, it should have been obvious. 

When Eddie was thirteen, he was locked in the bathroom for a lot longer than usual. He bathed and showered and cleaned three times over, but the door was still firmly locked. He eventually fell asleep on the tile, using the slightly-damp rug as a pillow. It was clean though. He had just washed it. Three times. He woke up what felt like days later, and he was not in the bathroom anymore. He didn’t know where he was. He couldn’t move—everything was restrained. Even his head was set in place. A bright light shined down on him, a lot like the light at the dentist’s office. He called for his mother, but no one answered. He didn’t know how long he was there before the room began to smell strange. It had to have been some kind of sleeping gas because he promptly passed out. When he came to, he wasn’t restrained, but he still couldn’t move his limbs. He could turn his head, however. He looked around the room, but everything was dark and his eyes wouldn’t adjust with the light hanging over him. When he looked right, he screamed. All five of his fingers were lobbed off, right at where the knuckle used to be. The pounding of running footsteps came from the left, then something struck him on the head. He saw black.

For what felt like the millionth time, he woke up and didn’t know what was going on. He was laying on a cold floor, the ceiling above him wooden and old. He felt something warm touch his side, like spilled water spreading out to cover the ground. He looked over and saw that it was a rapidly growing puddle of blood. He didn’t need to know what was going on to know it was his blood. The tourniquet strapped to his shoulder told him he was bleeding profusely. He lifted his head and saw the blood was coming from where his arm used to be. It wasn’t just his fingers that were gone now—his entire arm was gone, just enough of it left to say he had something of a shoulder. But everything else was gone. 

Eddie didn’t scream. He didn’t even panic. He didn’t know which made him pass out first: the shock or the blood loss. 

When he woke up, he knew it was over. He was tucked in bed, three pillows propping him up. His arm was stitched up, and there wasn’t a drop of blood in sight. His mother walked into the room with a tray of food and offered it to him. She wasn’t fazed by his lack of an arm in the slightest. He told her he wasn’t hungry, so she spoon-fed him soup until the bowl was empty. After she was gone, Eddie threw up himself on himself. 

Eddie didn’t ever get locked into the bathroom again, but his mother still disappeared for long periods of time. Sometimes days. She left him three pre-prepared meals a day for every day she was going to be gone. He never skipped a meal. When he was seventeen, his mother went on a trip for five days. On day three, the police showed up at his door. Eddie wondered what took them so long. They asked how he lost his arm, and he said he didn’t know. They asked where his mother was, and he said he didn’t know. At first, they thought he was being difficult, but when he offered to show them the commercial-size freezer in the basement, they showed themselves down. 

It was dozens upon dozens upon dozens of pounds of meat. 

“You found her,” Eddie whispered, and both cops spun around to face him, guns drawn, but Eddie wasn’t armed. He was barely even present in the moment. All he knew was that he was never going to see his mother again. Not in the same way he had. He would never have another one of her home-cooked meals, and he had never been more relieved. 

“I’m just sick of _meat_.”

Eddie Kaspbrak became famous overnight. His mother was arrested and sent to the Bangor Mental Health Institute where she would be held until his trial. He was the victim. Everyone had questions for him, but he was silent until the trial. Everyone why _dying_ to know what it was like to be the son of the Mother. So when he was on trial as a witness and victim, when all the journalists had their pens at the ready, when his mother, _the_ Mother, sat in handcuffs twenty feet in front of him, he spoke. 

“My mother watched me when I slept. Our house was old, and the walls were hollow. She would squeeze in between them and wake me up at night. I could always see her eyes through the vents that were directly above my bed. I didn’t know why she did it. I still don’t. She would lock me in the bathroom for hours at a time. Sometimes days. I never knew where she went while I was locked up, but meals always tasted… _freshest_ when she returned. Four years ago, my mother took my arm. She chopped it up and dumped it in a stew. Then she force-fed it to me. Since I was six years old, I have been cannibalizing children my age my mother deemed as a threat to me. She thought they would serve me better not as friends, but as food. I never brought anyone to meet my mother because they were always on a plate in front of me before I got to learn their names. It began with a boy named Will whose last name I never got to learn, and it only escalated from there. She thought what she was doing was good. She thought it was a necessity. I would have much rather preferred going vegetarian.”

There were so many journalists asking Eddie questions when he left the courthouse he had to be escorted out. No one was surprised when Sonia Kaspbrak was found guilty on all charges. She didn’t plead insanity, which Eddie found idiotic. She could have easily gotten away with at least that, but instead, she was sentenced to death by lethal injection. After her trial, Eddie never saw her again. Not that he wanted to. He never thought about her again. He wasn’t angry either. She was just doing what she felt had to be done. 

Eddie finished high school and moved far away from Maine. He found himself being drawn toward Virginia. He thought maybe he’d join the FBI, maybe prevent other kids from going through the same thing that happened to him. But once he stepped back and really thought about it, he didn’t really want to be in the police force. He wanted to grab life by the reins and pull. He wanted control. One thing led to another and he went to medical school. He moved to Baltimore and attended Johns Hopkins University and became a psychiatrist. He found he rather liked Baltimore, so he got himself a house and started a business. It didn’t take long for him to build a name for himself. He began mentoring people his senior well before he was thirty. It was mentoring a bright man, Doctor Benjamin Hanscom, that landed Eddie in a mix with the FBI’s best. One of their special agents needed a psychological evaluation before returning to the field. Apparently, he was too unstable and Ben was too personally close to the man in question to give the evaluation himself. So the special agent was referred to Eddie. 

“Dr. K!” Eddie was greeted when he welcomed the special agent into his office. 

“Kaspbrak, please, Mr. Tozier.”

Special Agent Tozier was actually a teacher at the academy. He had been offered a job after he failed the initial screening test to become a real agent. Too unstable. Couldn’t pull the trigger. Officially, he was just a consultant, but William Denbrough, the head of the FBI’s Behavioral Analysis Unit, said Tozier needed a psychological evaluation so he could come back to the field he had never really been in. 

Tozier eyed Eddie up and down before his eyes froze at the pinned up cloth of Eddie’s suit sleeve. He didn’t move, didn’t blink, didn’t breathe for at least a minute. Then he spoke gently, much softer than before. 

“You’re the kid. The Mother is… She’s _your_ mother.”

It wasn’t a question. 

“That _is_ what the press called her,” Eddie recalled, “isn’t it?”

Tozier blinked at Eddie. His gaze darkened. 

“What do people taste like?”

Sonia Kaspbrak killed to feed her child. She did it out of, to her thinking, necessity. 

“Wouldn’t you like to know?”

When Eddie did it, it was to see what would happen next. 

“I would. You’re a vegetarian now though, right? That's what you said in court.”

And when he did it, it was to see what new meal he could prepare for unexpecting guests. 

“I am not.”

⚂✕⚂✕⚂

No place ever saw Richie Tozier for longer than two months. His parents were always moving around, looking for work, and it only got worse when his mother died. Richie was barely seven, so he had memories of her, but none of them vivid. His dad took to drinking after she passed. Went never laid a hang on his boy, rarely ever got angry. He was just sad. And it made Richie sad too. But Richie was the one who had to play grown-up while his dad cried into a half-empty whiskey bottle. He was the one who wound up cooking off-brand macaroni and cheese and hot dogs for the both of them most nights. 

Richie was always the new kid at school. He constantly met new faces, learned new names, so it didn’t take long for him to realize that he was a bit different from everyone else. Not everyone could look at a person and know that they had buried a pet that morning and that there was a good chance it was a goldfish. Red eyes, slumped posture, and perpetual frown said they were mourning something. They were still attending school, so there wasn’t a real funeral to go to. Dirt on the knees and under the fingernails said they had been kneeling on the ground and digging. Torn shoes held together with duct tape—much like Richie’s own—said they were too poor to afford a dog or a cat. For a while, he called it “deductive reasoning” because it made him feel smart and he heard it on some British TV show he saw once while in a motel in Vermont. 

Speaking of TV shows, Richie watched a lot of them. He spent four or five hours a day staring at a fuzzy television screen because what else was there for him to do when he was only nine-years-old? He had already finished all his homework, and it wasn’t like he could leave his dad alone while he was hammered. And even if his dad was sober, Richie still couldn’t go anywhere because he didn’t have any friends and was _nine_. Kids’ TV shows got old quick, so Richie turned to the more adult shows. He really liked the crime ones, but there were too many plot holes for him to get invested and enjoy it. So he turned to the real news. The reporters were, generally speaking, idiots, but there was always a kind of mystery that intrigued him when information about the latest disappearances of children was released. He listened to FBI agents and local officers talk about how all the kids were around Richie’s age, most of them from Maine. They all disappeared without a trace, usually after school, and then their bodies were found destroyed, in pieces, about two weeks later. There usually were limbs missing. Sometimes organs too. The pictures shown on TV were always censored and blurred, but if Richie concentrated hard enough, he could almost see under the pixels. A lot of the time he used his deductive reasoning to make matches and find similarities between photos. He could see the cause and effect. He knew the who, what, where, why, when, and how even before the people on TV did. He knew the killer in Maine was a mother a month before the FBI did. He figured she thought her acts were out of a loving necessity. It was obvious she was eating them. She had a son, perhaps a daughter, but likely a son, the same age as the victims. He was a sick thing, or at least she believed that. He needed to be coddled. He needed to be fed well, and she couldn’t afford anything decent. She was a poor, desperate woman. A widow. As the years went on, Richie wondered what was becoming of the woman’s son. He was likely oblivious to the situation. It wouldn’t have been surprising if he was among the list of dead victims. If not that, then he was most definitely mutilated or severely injured in some way.

Richie didn’t know how he came to most of these conclusions, but he knew he was right. He kept the information to himself, blaming his newfound deductive reasoning skills on an overactive imagination. When he was younger his mother had always said that. Maybe she was more right than she ever knew. 

Richie was pushing eighteen when he first heard the name Edward Kaspbrak. He flipped on the news and saw a kid without an arm standing with his only hand on a bible swearing to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. Richie listened intently to what Edward Kaspbrak said, paying more attention to how he was saying things rather than what he was actually saying. One thing became very clear: Edward Kaspbrak knew damn well what his mother was doing. He never once seemed fazed throughout the trial, even when he was asked repeatedly about eating his own right arm. If anything, he seemed bored. Like all of what was going on was below him. 

After Sonia Kaspbrak was deemed guilty and put on death row, Edward Kaspbrak disappeared from the media. Richie tried time and time again, but the guy had simply vanished. Richie was disappointed, to say the least; he had found Edward Kaspbrak to be not quite interesting, but just fascinating, like an archaeologist would find a new artifact fascinating just because it was something new, something never before seen. Edward Kaspbrak was simply something else; he was new and shiny. But with time, Richie put the idea of Edward Kaspbrak in a mental file and locked it away. The man did not want to be seen, so he wouldn’t be. Richie did, however, not _forget_ about Edward Kaspbrak. To forget someone of that nature would be foolish and borderline rude. 

Richie decided he wanted to join the FBI after his second week of being a music major. He enjoyed making music and listening to it, but he _loathed_ discussing it with others. It was too whimsical. Too subjective and unfinalized. There was no answer at the end of the discussion, and he needed something solid. So he switched to a forensic science major, graduated in three years with a bachelor's degree, moved to Quantico, and just as being a real agent finally seemed within reach, it was ripped away. He passed everything with flying colors, except when it came to the part where he had to shoot a gun. A Glock 19 semi-automatic 9 mm pistol. A standard-issue handgun, really. Nothing fancy. It was the very last thing Richie had to do before becoming the real deal. He’d have a badge and everything. But one thing FBI agents sometimes had to do was shoot people; there was a test to see if you were mentally stable enough to do so. 

And Richie failed it. 

Three times.

It wasn’t long after that he was offered a teaching position at the academy due to his high scores and intellect. He took the position, but it was dull. Every day he lectured to the same smiling, eager faces Richie wanted to punch the teeth out of. He knew what it was like to be in their seats, thinking he would eventually get to work in the big leagues. But here he was, back in a classroom. A teacher. Who would have thought Richie Tozier would end up a teacher? Not Richie Tozier, that’s for sure. And that’s why, after a mere eight months of working, he quit. He moved down south and took up fixing cars and boat motors, something his dad had taught him to do so Richie could make a buck or two and buy a bag of dry pasta shells and meatless sauce to feed them. He was a self-employed mechanic for a good nine years, almost ten, but a tiny part of Richie wished he had stayed with the FBI. Mechanics were fun and all, but they were too predictable. It was boring, and Richie loathed boredom. He figured, fuck it, got nothing better to do, so he drove back up to Virginia, picked up a stray dog along the way, got attached, named him Mr. Chips for the hell of it because he might have been a little tipsy, realized he was a she, resorted to calling her Chip because she already responded to the name, found a dirt-cheap cabin in a place called Wolf Trap, bought it, found another dog who was very pregnant, panicked while she gave birth, buried six of the seven, named the mom Gabby, named the new son Max, wound up in the same teaching position he had before, drank himself to sleep every night, and graded poorly-written papers until Dr. Ben Hanscom walked into his classroom one random Thursday afternoon. Richie pointedly did not look away from his work until Ben spoke. 

“Richie.”

“Ben,” Richie replied coolly, like he didn’t care much for who he was speaking to, and truthfully, he didn’t. He just wanted to get home to his girls and boy and accidentally fill his whiskey glass too full. Class had been particularly irritable that day. “To what do I owe the pleasure?” The sarcasm dripped thickly like molasses, so it was incredibly bothersome when Ben deliberately ignored it. 

“I just came to give you a heads up.”

Richie glanced up from the papers marked with red. His glasses sat low on the bridge of his nose, and he did not push them up. Ben was blurred while Richie’s desk remained in focus. 

Ben said, “Bill wants to talk to you,” and Richie immediately felt like swallowing a bullet. There was never a time that Bill wanted to talk to Richie unless he wanted something. “He said he might stop by later,” Ben continued and then forced a smile when he heard footsteps come up behind him. “He said that earlier. Later is now.”

“Ruh-richie Tozier,” William Denbrough, head of the BAU, said much too gleefully for what Richie knew he was going to ask. He hadn’t seen what was inside the file Bill was holding, but he had a damn good guess as to what it was. “Juh-juh-just the muh-an I wanted to see.”

“He already told you no, Bill,” Ben cut in, always coming to Richie’s defense. The two had a history after all. Ben had a _professional interest_ in Richie’s overactive imagination, and Richie’s overactive imagination became unprofessionally interested when Ben was in the room. (Ben wasn’t exactly hard on the eyes.)

“He-he can speak for hih-hih-himself, Dr. Hanscom,” Bill countered, to which Richie frowned. Richie was notorious for being easy to talk to. He understood people and was a very good listener on top of that. He could chat for hours, rambling about anything and everything, but as soon as the conversation turned to him personally, he shut down. He built forts. 

“I said no once, Bill, and I’ll say it again.”

Bill opened up the file and spread the pictures on Richie’s desk anyway. 

“We nuh-need a fresh puh-puh-puh-pair of eyes, Rich.” 

Richie looked down despite himself. Several dead bodies. Maggots crawled under their skin. Their eyes were pulled out and stitched to where their genitals were cut off. All male. All white. All the same age. Blond. Blue eyes. Lean. 

“We need yuh-yuh- _your_ eyes.”

Richie looked at the pictures.

“Richie, you don’t have to-”

Bill grabbed Ben’s outstretched arm and cut him off.

Richie lined up the pictures. There were twelve. Four columns, three rows. He narrowed down on the first image. At the bottom of the photo was the victim’s name. He closed his eyes, and the golden pendulum swung. 

_My hands do not shake when I press a syringe into the flesh of Victor Criss. I am not an intellectual, but I am not reckless. I am confident in my abilities. I have done this before. Victor is young; he is beautiful. He falls unconscious just as the drug hits his brain. He looks at me. He knows me. This is why he is afraid. I drag his limp form out of my car, his feet dragging in the shallow mud behind me. I take him to my most special place with my favorite toys._

_I lift Victor’s eyelids and cut them off unevenly. This is an act of passion. I enjoy this. I use my hands to pry out his eyes. I dig my thumbs into the bags of his eyes until I feel them dislodge. This wakes Victor. He screams, and I drink the sound. I take his eyes into my palms and roll them around. Perhaps now he will see what I have seen. I use my late aunt’s sewing kit to thread the eyes together. I use my father’s knife to clear the area between his legs. I toss the flesh to the side. It once excited me, but now I fear it._

_This is not an act of violence; this is self-harm._

_This is practice._

_This is what was done to_ me. 

Richie blinked once, twice, thrice. He pointed to the first victim and said, “this one is gonna be someone your killer was really close to. The second one, not so much. The third, a little less. As time passed, the killer—what are you calling him?”

“The Puh-paper Man. Kuh-Kuh-Keene said that there’s nuh-nuhothing like a little fuh-fear to make a paper man cuh-crumble. And after that, the name juh-juh-juh-just stuck.”

“Keene…” Richie’s brow furrowed. “Wait, _Gretta_ Keene? _Tattlecrime_ ’s Gretta Keene?”

Bill nodded, and Richie had to use every fiber of his being not to groan. Then he groaned anyway because Gretta Keene was _that_ repulsive. 

“Great.” Richie ran his hands through his hair and ripped through some knots. “So as time passes, the Paper Man is getting further and further away from his initial goal. The first one is clearly more intimate than the second, and the second more than the third. Your twelfth victim probably doesn’t have any relation to the Paper Man. You wanna find him, you look at the first body.”

Bill put both hands on Richie’s desk and leaned forward. His cologne smelled expensive. 

“Are you suh-suggesting that as the Paper Muh-muhan killed and mutilated, he-he got a taste for blood and duh-duh-drove himself to insanity?” 

“Oh, Billiam.” Richie stood up and put his back to Bill and Ben. “That’s putting it simply, but it’s not a suggestion if we both know I’m right.”

“Anything else?” Ben piped up for the first time in a while. 

“It’s an act of self-harm,” Richie replied much too casually for what he was saying. “But that much is obvious. Even Keene could tell that much from her little ‘fear makes a paper man crumble’ line.” He began to pace slowly. “The only question is why would the Paper Man try to hurt himself like this? And what’s his deal with eyeballs and dicks?”

“You have any ideas?”

“A few.” Richie’s footsteps came to a halt. “Honestly, the first thing that comes to mind is rape. But this is… It’s not wrong, but his motive is more three-dimensional than that. Maybe something more like childhood molesting? Like some repressed trauma that’s finally surfacing? No, that’s stupid. What does that have to do with the eyes? Unless it’s him finally seeing it for the first time, but-... That just doesn’t _work.”_

“Suh-suh-suh-suh-seems like a perfectly fuh-fine motive to me,” Bill said, ever the idiot. God, that man was so intelligent, but sometimes he forgot to see what was right in front of him. 

“It fits the motive, yes, but it lacks _character._ This killer has style, and that motive has no flair.”

Bill swapped a quick look with Ben and nodded. Back to Richie, he asked, “so you’ll wuh-work the case?”

“I-...” Richie sat back down in his chair and spun around a few times, mulling it over. He knew he shouldn’t. It made him too excited. He got too invested and lost himself in the minds of those who he shouldn’t dare look at. 

“There are other people who can do this, Bill. You don’t need me.”

Bill gaped. “Rich, you’re the buh-best of them all! You muh-muh-muh-make jumps you can’t eh-explain and come to conclusions wih-wih-without reason. But you’re nuh-never wrong.”

“Bill, I can’t-”

“Wuh-we _need_ you.”

“He said no, Bill.” Ben turned to face their superior. “Shouldn’t that be enough?”

“Puh-puh-lease see yourself out, Duh-dr. Hanscom,” Bill said flatly, his tone swiftly changing depending on who he was addressing. “Yuh-yuh-you are no longer a puh-part of this conversation.”

Ben tried to get Richie to ask him to stay, but Richie suddenly thought Adam Davidson’s essay over the difference between shiv and small knife wounds was very interesting. Fourteen quick clicks of professional-grade boots said Ben had left in a huff. 

“Richie,” Bill tried again. 

“Bill,” Richie countered. “I’m afraid that if I open that door in my head, I won’t be able to close it again.”

Bill sat on the edge of Richie’s desk and looked down at the man in question. For a moment, just a fraction of a fragment of a moment, Richie was looking up at his old mentor, a man who he had looked up to, figuratively then and literally now. Once upon a time, it had been his dream to be in Bill’s shoes. Now, that dream had killed itself and wasn’t even a concept in Richie’s head. Besides, now that he knew Bill up close and personally, he wasn’t so sure that was what he wanted anymore. 

“I’ll puh-protect you, Richie.”

“From what? Them? The crooks and murderers and baddies roaming in the shadows?” He laughed. “I don’t need protection from them. I need it from myself and the horrors in my mind. And not even the great Bill Denbrough can save me from that.”

But Bill persisted. “Yuh-yuh-you’ll be saving luh-lives, Richie.”

He couldn’t argue with that. What was his pathetic life compared to dozens of innocents? 

“I guarantee I’ll go a little crazy, but fine. I’ll do it. Just promise not to lock me away when we’re done, okay?”

Bill smiled for the first time all day. “I nuh-nuh-knew you were a guh-good person.” And then that smile wavered. “I juh-just need you to do wuh-wuh-one thing for me first.” 

Richie felt himself go pale. 

“A suh-suh-psych eval. Stuh-standard procedure for spuh-puh-pecial agents-”

“Wait, I’m gonna be a special agent?!” Richie shamelessly felt himself get starry-eyed because how fucking cool did _Special Agent Tozier_ sound?! He almost forgot about how much he hated people swimming around in his brain, poking at him with needles like he was some kind of experimental lab rat.

“Yes.” Bill sounded almost teasing. “You’ll be a special uh-agent.” It was a tone Richie could get used to. “I’d send you to Buh-buh-ben, but I’m afraid he muh-might have tuh-too much of a personal buh-buh-bias.”

“Then who’s judging my sanity?”

And that was how Richie Tozier ended up in the office of one Dr. Edward Kaspbrak. 

“Dr. K!” Richie greeted when the door to the psychiatrist's office was opened for him. 

“Kaspbrak, please, Mr. Tozier.”

Alright. So he was kinda snooty. And had a bit of a stick up his ass. Speaking of ass, he did have a rather _fine_ one. But while checking out his doctor, he couldn’t help but notice the complete lack of a right

_I’m laying on concrete. The room is damp and dark. I cannot see as She approaches me, but I know it is Her. For the first time in my life, I do not fear Her. I do not worry. She touches me with blades of familiarity. We both know what She is doing. I brace myself for the years to come, where I will face Her at our table, in the court of law, in the final chair where we will sit until we are dwindled down to I. I will carry on our legacy, but I do not honor Her. She disrespects me. She is rude. And for that, She owes me everything._

arm. 

“You’re the kid. The Mother is…” Richie said, understanding just exactly who was standing in front of him. “She’s _your_ mother.”

The doctor’s gaze did not waver. “That _is_ what the press called her, isn’t it?”

Richie stayed firm, asking the question he had been unconsciously wondering for decades. “What do people taste like?”

Dr. Kaspbrak found this amusing. “Wouldn’t you like to know?”

“I would,” Richie quipped back. Two could play at this game. “You’re a vegetarian now though, right? That's what you said in court.”

Dr. Kaspbrak’s grin widened, though that wasn’t saying a lot. It was quite subtle. “I am not.”

“Surely, meat’s a turnoff after what happened.”

“It would be ironic if I found _meat_ to be a turnoff. More often than not, I find it’s the opposite.”

Richie swore up and down that for a split second, Dr. Eddie Kaspbrak checked him out. 

“Are you _propositioning_ me, doctor?” Richie put a hand on his chest, clearly flattered, and leaned forward into the open office that felt more like a Victorian library from a fantasy than a real workplace.

“Please,” Dr. Kaspbrak said, sitting down in a plush chair and picking up a notepad that had been resting on the seat of it. “We both know that’s not true.” He gestured for Richie to sit in the chair opposite of him.

“A man can dream,” Richie said, ignoring the invitation to sit and instead admiring the large room they were in. Books lined the walls, and where there weren’t shelves, there were tables with sculptures, frames with old paintings. There were objects everywhere. The ceiling was high, and there was a ladder on the far side of the room that led up to a balcony-type structure circling the two chairs, one of which Dr. Kaspbrak was sitting in. Curious, Richie approached the ladder and deemed it sturdy enough of climbing. Once at the top, he saw that it was just more books. Books and files. Likely patient files. He pulled out a random folder and flipped it open. From down below, Dr. Kaspbrak said nothing about Richie’s snooping. He only watched with narrow eyes. Richie skimmed the information and got bored before reaching halfway down the first page. He slipped the folder back where he found it and leaned against the railing, staring down the good doctor who didn’t have anything written down on his notepad. 

He didn’t have a pen.

“Quite a place you’ve got here, Dr. K.” Richie didn’t miss Dr. Kaspbrak’s grimace at the shortening of his last name. “Can’t say I’m surprised, though. You’re good at what you do.”

“Are you?” 

“Am I what?”

“Good at what you do, Mr. Tozier.”

Richie turned around and sat on the railing. As he spun around to face Dr. Kaspbrak, it didn’t creak under his weight. His feet were at least fifteen feet off the ground. If he fell at the right angle, he could do some serious damage. The small statue below him didn’t look cheap. When he finally turned his attention back to Dr. Kaspbrak, the notepad was gone from his hand and back on his desk. Odd. Richie hadn’t heard him move. 

“What exactly it is that I do depends entirely on who you ask.”

“I’m asking you.”

The room held a tension to it. It was mystical, if not a bit gloomy. It felt like Richie was sitting on a catwalk in an Italian opera house. He wondered if Dr. K would break out in song if he waited long enough.

But Richie wasn’t a particularly patient person. 

“Then I’m a teacher in Quantico. I’m taking a side job out of the goodness of my heart where I’ll be a temporary special agent. Apparently, they need help catching the bad guy this time.”

“And you’re the help they’ll be needing?”

“According to Bill, yeah. He says I’m an _empath,_ even though that’s not a real diagnosis outside of _Star Trek_ or something. They just don’t know what to call me.”

“What would you call you?” Dr. Kaspbrak crossed his legs, and his face remained neutral. 

“A freak of nature,” Richie answered bluntly.

“A vague answer.”

Richie rolled his eyes and got off the railing and back onto the balcony. He pulled more files he didn’t care about and thumbed through them just to have something to do with his hands. He looked, but he didn’t read. 

“Fine. A freak with an overactive imagination. Happy?”

“What you have is pure empathy.” Dr. Kaspbrak’s voice came from a new location. Closer. “You can assume any point of view: mine, Detective Denbrough’s, and maybe some other points of view that scare you. It’s an uncomfortable gift.” 

“Uncomfortable is one word for it. Not one I’d use, though.”

“No?”  
  


“I’d say it’s shit, Doc.” Richie jammed a file back in the shelf in a spot that wasn’t where it had come from. “But pardon my French.” 

“Not fond of eye contact-”

_“Jesus, fuck!”_

Richie nearly jumped out of his skin at Dr. K suddenly standing mere inches away from his face. 

“Are you, Richard?” 

Richie doubled over, clutching at his heart. “Just Richie,” he mumbled as he leaned against the shelf. 

“Okay, Richie,” Dr. Kaspbrak echoed, smiling thinly. “I believe that what you see and learn meets with everything else in your mind. You’re shocked at your own associations and appalled at your dreams, yet you continue to live with them. There are no walls between you and what you love.”

Richie rose to his full height, and despite the several inches he had on the doctor, he felt small. He was the one on unfamiliar territory, and it was clear that he wasn’t the one with the upper hand. 

“Don’t psychoanalyze me, Eddie.”

“Dr. Kaspbrak,” Eddie corrected. 

“You won’t like me when I’m psychoanalyzed.”

Eddie tilted his head innocently. “But is that not the very reason why you’re here?”

“Not anymore, it isn’t.” In a huff, Richie pushed past Eddie and climbed down the ladder. “Bill can fuck off and suck my ass about all the lives I won’t save.” He didn’t stop or move slowly, but just as he went to leave the psychiatrist’s office, he was called back.

“Don’t forget this,” Eddie called to him, now standing behind his desk, 

_(silent but deadly the evil men play-)_

hunched over and writing something quickly. He tucked a slip of paper neatly into a manila envelope and held it out. “Special Agent Tozier.”

There’s a sparkle of something in Eddie’s eye that made Richie want to reach for the gun hidden in the waistband of his jeans, but it also made him want to sit down in that chair and have a chat.

He took the envelope and left without a farewell. 

⚂✕⚂✕⚂

**Author's Note:**

> Yeah, I'm super bad at updating. I could update this tomorrow or in six months. Who knows. :)


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